Health and environmental concerns

 Researchers have found that when rats breathed in nanoparticles, the particles settled in the brain and lungs, which led to significant increases in biomarkers for inflammation and stress response and that nanoparticles induce skin aging through oxidative stress in hairless mice.A two-year study at UCLA's School of Public Health found lab mice consuming nano-titanium dioxide showed DNA and chromosome damage to a degree "linked to all the big killers of man, namely cancer, heart disease, neurological disease and aging".A major study published more recently in Nature Nanotechnology suggests some forms of carbon nanotubes – a poster child for the “nanotechnology revolution” – could be as harmful as asbestos if inhaled in sufficient quantities. Anthony Seaton of the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh, Scotland, who contributed to the article on carbon nanotubes said "We know that some of them probably have the potential to cause mesothelioma. So those sorts of materials need to be handled very carefully." In the absence of specific regulation forthcoming from governments, Paull and Lyons (2008) have called for an exclusion of engineered nanoparticles in food. A newspaper article reports that workers in a paint factory developed serious lung disease and nanoparticles were found in their lungs.Extremely small fibers, so called nanofibers, can be as harmful for the lungs as asbestos is. This scientists warn for in the publication "Toxicology Sciences" after experiments with mice. Nanofibers are used in several areas and in different products, in everything from aircraft wings to tennis rackets. In experiments the scientists have seen how mice breathed nanofibers of silver. Fibers larger than 5 micrometerwere capsuled in the lungs where they caused inflammations (a precursor for cancer like mesothelioma).